Dreamers Need to Stick Together

Have you seen Tomorrowland? No spoiler alert needed, I won’t be giving it away. But I did want to share this quote from the film:

“Dreamers need to stick together…”

I love the idea behind this. Dreams, desires and visions are fragile things. They need to be nurtured and supported so that people can act on them. Too often they are squelched by negativity before they can sprout and take life. And that is a very sad thing

Have you ever done this? Had a great idea pop into your head, then chased it right out with “oh, that will never work”, or “yeah, who am I kidding”, or “right, that will be the day!” Most of us fall victim to this so often we probably don’t realize what we’re doing to ourselves.

That’s why we need to band together with our support groups, our communities, our Masterminds, to feed these thoughts before they get stomped on. Sure, not every idea can be a winner, but the process of brainstorming is only successful if we allow all the ideas the light of day, the wilder the better. You never judge too soon. You pull and pull and pull until you get all the possibilities from all different angles. Then, when you have the right people in the room (and only then!), you begin to evaluate the ideas carefully to sift out the unworkable and start with those that show the most promise.

Fred Smith was a dreamer. As an undergraduate student at Yale in the ‘60’s, he submitted a paper on improving mail delivery in the coming information age. But his professor wasn’t buying the dream and panned the paper. Just to get a ‘C’, he said, the idea had to be feasible.

Less than 10 years later, Fred Smith used that idea to bring his dream to life. He started a little company called FederalExpress – perhaps you’ve heard of it? He revolutionized the way we send mail, when it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight. In the end, Fred feasibled the crap outta that one!

Good thing Fred wasn’t a very good student and didn’t listen too well. Also good that he had the conviction to push his idea to fruition, despite the stomping by his professor. But for every Fred Smith, there are thousands of us who give up on our ideas at the first sign of resistance or skepticism. And that is not good for our species.